In many organizations, an idea management system is used as a management tool for organizing, tracking, collaborating, evaluating, and implementing innovative ideas. An idea management system generally allows an organization to capture the best innovative idea for the purpose of producing positive results for the organization and its employees. For example, using an idea management system, an organization can collect various ideas from its employees, customers, suppliers, industry groups, to improve the quality of its product and/or service, to reduce overhead and expense, to enhance business performance and opportunities, and to provide a better working environment. An effective idea management system provides a platform for all users within the organization to express their innovative ideas, and enables the best idea to emerge from all the ideas.
An idea management system typically includes an idea collaboration market that allows the users to post their own ideas and to evaluate other users' ideas via various mechanisms such as posting comments, reviews, scores, and rankings. In addition to the idea collaboration market, an idea management system may also include an idea prediction market to further evaluate each idea. An idea prediction market is a type of prediction market that allows the users to predict which ideas will at some point in time be selected, implemented, and generate substantial benefit for their organization. In an idea prediction market, each idea is associated with a share price and is traded among participants in the idea prediction market. Participants buy shares when they predict the idea to be “good”, or sell shares when they predict the idea to be “bad”. Therefore, under the market mechanism, the value of an idea is supposed to be reflected in the share price of that idea. Ideally, by applying the market mechanism, the total sum of information that is present with all the participants is most effectively aggregated.
For detailed examples of idea prediction market, please see U.S. Patent Application Publication number 2009/0182624, entitled “Method and Apparatus for Generating and Evaluating Ideas in an Organization,” filed on Dec. 15, 2008. Other examples of idea prediction market can be found at Spigit website, where various idea management systems are being developed by Spigit Inc., Pleasanton, Calif.